teaching/sermons/col-1-15-20/commentaries/wright_sovereignty_in_eschaton.md

Wright on guarding present sovereignty inside the already-not-yet

A focused reading of N. T. Wright across three sources, on the precise question: how does he preach/write inaugurated eschatology without diminishing the present, active, in-charge sovereignty of God over events, evil, the powers, and the ordinary Tuesday morning?

Sources, in order of yield:

Quotes verbatim. [...] marks trims; [brackets] indicate transcription/formatting fixes (e.g., Anglicised spelling left intact). Citations are [line N] against the named source.

§1. Wright on present sovereignty — verbatim

Wright's strongest sentences affirm that Jesus is already in charge of the world, not waiting for a future moment to begin reigning. The Ascension passage is the load-bearing one:

"True, in both these ancient creeds it also says that Jesus, through his Ascension, was seated at 'the right hand of the Father'. In ancient Jewish thought, with echoes of Daniel 7, this could only mean that, from that moment, Jesus was the Father's right-hand man, in charge of the whole world. [...] The Ascension, for many people, implies Jesus' absence, not his universal presence and sovereign rule. And this time it isn't only Matthew, Mark, Luke and John who will raise objections; it's Paul, Hebrews and Revelation as well. They all think that Jesus is already in charge of the world. (Check out, for instance, 1 Corinthians 15.20–28; Hebrews 2.5–9; Revelation 5.6–14.) That was what they understood by 'God's kingdom'." — How God Became King, ch. 1 [line 262]

The crisp single-line version Wright reaches for again and again:

"What I miss, right across the Western tradition [...] is the devastating and challenging message I find in the four gospels: God really has become king – in and through Jesus! A new state of affairs has been brought into existence. A door has been opened that nobody can shut. Jesus is now the world's rightful Lord, and all other lords are to fall at his feet." — How God Became King, ch. 2 [line 357]

The Bishop-of-Durham hymn-edit anecdote — small, vivid, sermon-quotable, and structurally identical to the question this deliverable is asking:

"Doesn't the Easter hymn say, 'Now above the sky he's king / where the angels ever sing / Alleluia'? Well, yes, it does. More's the pity. Actually, when I was Bishop of Durham I used to insist that we change that line to, 'Now o'er all the world he's king / while the angels ever sing / Alleluia'. That's what the Ascension is about." — How God Became King, ch. 2 [line 361]

The three-evangelist-and-Paul-and-Revelation roll call — Wright wants to make sure the reader knows this isn't a fringe claim:

"Matthew believed that Jesus had already accomplished it: 'All authority', declares Matthew's Jesus, 'in heaven and on earth has been given to me' (28.18). Paul believed Jesus was already reigning; you can't understand Romans or 1 Corinthians or Philippians unless you take that as basic. Revelation celebrates the sovereignty of Jesus from first page to last." — How God Became King, ch. 8 [line 1325]

And the direct Colossians 3 commentary — the most explicit Wright gets on present-tense reign in the actual sermon-text neighborhood:

"This phrase, particularly in its allusion to Psalm 110, focuses attention on the sovereign rule which Christ now exercises. The command to aspire to the things of heaven is a command to meditate and dwell upon Christ's sort of life, and on the fact that he is now enthroned as the Lord of the world. The Bible does not say very much about heaven. But its central feature is clear: it is the place where the crucified Christ already reigns, where his people already have full rights of citizenship (Phil. 3:19ff.)." — Colossians and Philemon, on 3:1–4 [line 675]

On the Col 1:15–20 hymn itself, Wright's exegetical gloss puts the same claim in stricter language:

"Verse 16 thus moves the thought of the poem from the past (Christ as agent of creation) to the present (Christ as the one to whom the world owes allegiance) and to the future (Christ whose sovereignty will become universal). Though the powers are now in rebellion, he remains their true Lord." — Colossians and Philemon, on 1:16 [line 486]

"The exaltation of Christ after his work on the cross gives him, publicly, the status which he always in fact enjoyed as of right. The puzzle is caused by sin: though always Lord by right, he must become Lord in fact, by defeating sin and death." — Colossians and Philemon, on 1:18 [line 490]

"There is no sphere of existence over which Jesus is not sovereign, in virtue of his role both in creation (1:16–17) and in reconciliation (1:18–20). There can be no dualistic division between some areas which he rules and others which he does not. 'There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.' The task of evangelism is therefore best understood as the proclamation that Jesus is already Lord, that in him God's new creation has broken into history, and that all people are therefore summoned to submit to him in love, worship and obedience." — Colossians and Philemon, on 1:15–20 [line 504]

§2. Wright on the already-not-yet tension

Wright names the tension in his own technical vocabulary. The defining paragraph:

"The early Christian writers were, of course, setting forth an eschatology that had been inaugurated, but not fully consummated; they were celebrating (Paul is quite explicit on this point in 1 Corinthians 15.20–28) something that has already happened, but at the same time something that still has to happen in the future. They believed themselves to be living between Jesus' accomplishment of the reign of God and its full implementation." — How God Became King, ch. 8 [line 1326]

His Colossians commentary names the same shape, in lower-register language, directly on the sermon-text neighborhood:

"There is a perfect balance here between the 'already' and the 'not yet' that are so characteristic of Paul's teaching on the Christian life. The new age has dawned, and Christians already belong to it. The old age, however, is not yet wound up, and until they die (or until the Lord 'appears' again in his second coming) their new life will be a secret truth, 'hidden' from view (from others, much of the time: often enough, from themselves too)." — Colossians and Philemon, on 3:3–4 [line 676]

The Simply Christian image — the in-between as fault line, not absence:

"We are called to live at the overlap both of heaven and earth—the earth that has yet to be fully redeemed as one day it will be—and of God's future and this world's present. We are caught on a small island near the point where these tectonic plates, heaven and earth, future and present, are scrunching themselves together. Be ready for earthquakes." — Simply Christian, ch. 12 — Prayer [line 950]

"Christian prayer is about standing at the fault lines, being shaped by the Jesus who knelt in Gethsemane, groaning in travail, holding heaven and earth together like someone trying to tie two pieces of rope with people tugging at the other ends to pull them apart." — Simply Christian, ch. 12 [line 957]

The two-overlapping-ages framing — Wright's most explicit Pauline reading, written on Col 1:24:

"Instead of the old and the new ages standing as it were back to back, [Paul] understood them as overlapping. Jesus' resurrection had inaugurated the new age, but the old would continue alongside it until Jesus' second coming. The whole of the time-span between the Lord's resurrection and his return was, then, the period of the turn-around of the eras: and therefore the whole period would be characterized by 'the Messianic woes'." — Colossians and Philemon, on 1:24 [line 541]

"This knowledge about the two ages, as we shall see, forms the basis of Paul's later appeal in 2:20–3:4." — Colossians and Philemon, on 1:24 [line 555]

§3. Wright's specific moves to guard sovereignty inside the eschatological frame

This is the heart of the deliverable. Across the three sources Wright makes a cluster of distinctive moves that together keep present sovereignty intact while honouring the not-yet. They are mechanical — habits of preacher-speech the reader can extract and reuse.

Move 1 — Always present-tense the reign. Refuse the future-only vocabulary.

Wright will not let "Jesus will be king" stand alone. He corrects on the spot. The hymn-edit anecdote at [line 361] is the diagnostic instance — he literally changed a hymn lyric ("Now above the sky he's king" → "Now o'er all the world he's king") to refuse the displacement of present sovereignty into the future or into a "spiritual realm." This is a practice, not a theory: the preacher monitors his own grammar and corrects it.

The clearest theological statement of why this matters:

"In fact, the Ascension, for many people, implies Jesus' absence, not his universal presence and sovereign rule." — How God Became King, ch. 1 [line 262]

The displacement Wright is policing is exactly the one the prompt names. The not-yet, badly preached, becomes Jesus' absence. Wright's discipline is to make every Ascension-reference, every right-hand-of-God reference, every "kingdom" reference present-tense and earth-located.

Move 2 — Roll-call. Cite Paul, Hebrews, Revelation, Matthew together so it can't be downplayed.

When the not-yet starts to crowd out the already, Wright reaches for cumulative weight: four NT witnesses, lined up, all saying the same thing.

"They all think that Jesus is already in charge of the world. (Check out, for instance, 1 Corinthians 15.20–28; Hebrews 2.5–9; Revelation 5.6–14.) That was what they understood by 'God's kingdom'." — How God Became King, ch. 1 [line 262]

"Matthew believed that Jesus had already accomplished it [...] Paul believed Jesus was already reigning [...] Revelation celebrates the sovereignty of Jesus from first page to last. But of course neither Matthew nor Paul nor Revelation supposed for a minute that this meant that utopia had already arrived [...] Christians were being persecuted, facing violent opposition, celebrating the lordship of Jesus in a world where Caesar and his type of power still seemed to be solid and unshaken." — How God Became King, ch. 8 [line 1325]

The closing clause of that paragraph is the load-bearing one for the diminishment-risk question. The sovereignty of Jesus is celebrated in conditions where Caesar still looks solid and unshaken. Wright's preacher-discipline is to refuse to let appearances determine the claim.

Move 3 — "Despite appearances" as a structural posture, not a wishful aside.

Wright's most concentrated form of this move:

"So of course Christianity is reduced from an eschatology ('This is where history was meant to be going, despite appearances!') to a religion ('Here is a way of being spiritual'), because world history can't have two great turning points." — How God Became King, ch. 8 [line 1329]

The parenthetical despite appearances is the operative phrase. For Wright, eschatology IS the claim that what is happening underneath the surface of history outranks what shows on the surface. He refuses to let the surface (Caesar's continued solidity, the world's continued mess) be the deciding evidence.

The corresponding move in How God Became King ch. 1:

"It is, however, an inaugurated eschatological message, claiming that this 'something' has indeed happened in and through Jesus and does not yet look like what people might have imagined. That is the story the gospels are telling." — How God Became King, ch. 2 [line 357]

The "doesn't yet look like" sits inside the affirmation, not against it. The claim is not that the kingdom hasn't come; the claim is that it has come and looks unfamiliar.

Move 4 — The cross IS the throne. Sovereignty is most visible at the point of apparent defeat.

This is the move that does the heaviest pastoral work. Wright reads the crucifixion not as the moment when Jesus appears not to be in charge, but as the moment when his rule is publicly inaugurated. The cross is the point on the timeline where present sovereignty becomes manifest precisely under conditions of contrary appearance.

"Jesus, having declared that he will be vindicated, goes to his death as to an enthronement, while the Judaean leaders declare that they have no king but Caesar." — How God Became King, ch. 9 [line 1618]

"As Paul saw, the rulers of this age didn't understand what they were doing when they crucified the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2.8). [...] Sending Jesus to his death was assisting in the enthronement of the one whose bringing of justice to the nations flowed out of his sovereign, healing love (John 13.1)." — How God Became King, ch. 10 [line 1715]

"Jesus is enthroned as king of the Jews, and from now on he is also king of the world. The cross in John, which we already know to be the fullest unveiling of God's, and Jesus', love (13.1), is also the moment when God takes his power and reigns over Caesar. From now on, the ruler of this world is judged." — How God Became King, ch. 7 [line 1218]

The structural payoff: Wright's reader is being trained to look at the worst moment in the narrative — Roman empire visibly winning, Israel's leaders denying their king, the Messiah dying — and see that as the very moment God's sovereignty is being established. This trains the reader to do the same thing on Tuesday morning: the moment when sovereignty seems most absent is exactly where Wright says it is most actively at work.

Move 5 — The powers are both created-in-him and disarmed-by-him. Both stay true.

Wright reads Col 1:16 and Col 2:15 together. The thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities listed in v.16 are the ones disarmed in 2:15 — and the disarming is already accomplished, not future.

"In other words, the powers that put Jesus on the cross didn't realize that by doing so they were in fact serving God's purposes [...]. Paul puts it even more positively, seeing the cross as the weapon with which God stripped the armour from the rulers and authorities, as soldiers would do with beaten enemies: 'He stripped the rulers and authorities of their armour, and displayed them contemptuously to public view, celebrating his triumph over them in him.' (Colossians 2.15). That is to say, when Jesus died on the cross he was winning the victory over 'the rulers and authorities' who have carved up this world in their own violent and destructive way." — How God Became King, ch. 9 [lines 1611–1617]

The Col 1:16 commentary itself:

"Wherever you look, or whatever realities you think of, you discover entities which, even if they do not acknowledge the fact, owe their very existence to Christ. They are his handiwork. [...] No power structures are, however, independent of Christ: for all things were created by him and for him." — Colossians and Philemon, on 1:16 [lines 484–486]

The Col 2:15 commentary, with the explicit theodicy framing:

"This passage raises sharply the question: how can Paul, who said earlier that 'all things' were reconciled to God through the cross (1:19–20; see the commentary there), declare here that on the cross the powers have been defeated? The missing clue, unstated but understood, is the doctrine of the fall. [...] God's response to this situation was one of sovereign love. Wanting the very best for his world, he determined to rid it entirely of the evil which has corrupted it at its very heart." — Colossians and Philemon, on 2:15 [line 632]

The phrase "sovereign love" is doing a lot of work. The same word — sovereign — is the load Wright places on God's response to the powers, not just on God's enthronement.

Move 6 — Pre-Christian Jewish theology already held both. Wright leans on that pattern.

Wright's most surprising move, and his most disciplined: he points out that Second Temple Judaism held the same tension long before Jesus, and held it without collapsing one side into the other. The pattern is older than the church, and Wright treats it as theologically load-bearing.

"As we saw earlier, the Judaism of the postexilic period had quite a well-developed narrative of God and empire. Even though many Jews longed for God to become king in the full, complete way he'd promised, they still believed that in the interim he was in fact already in some sense sovereign over the nations. Yes, he allowed pagan kings to rule; as the creator, he didn't want his world to collapse into anarchy. But he judged rulers severely, cutting them down to size, as with Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar in the book of Daniel." — How God Became King, ch. 8 [line 1349]

"Because the Jews believed that (as we find in books such as Daniel and Jeremiah) God's will for his people in exile was that they live wisely within the pagan world where they found themselves, and because they believed that God was ultimately sovereign (in ways that are normally invisible) over those nations, they were able to develop a theological account of the comings and goings of pagan nations and their rulers as well as a subversive literature and lifestyle [...]." — How God Became King, ch. 8 [line 1356]

This is the under-appreciated move. The already/not-yet tension is not a Christian innovation that requires a special bracket-trick to hold together. It is the inherited Jewish posture under pagan rule: God is already sovereign, normally invisibly, over kingdoms that visibly do as they please. Wright treats this as the framework Jesus fulfilled, not the framework Jesus replaced.

Move 7 — Distinguish "inaugurated" from "passive waiting." Hope is active.

Wright is explicit that inaugurated eschatology is the opposite of "wait and trust" passivity. The new creation is something Jesus is currently working through the church.

"New creation itself has begun, they are saying, and will be completed. Jesus is ruling over that new creation and making it happen through the witness of his church. 'The ruler of this world' has been overthrown; the powers of the world have been led behind Jesus' triumphal procession as a beaten, bedraggled rabble. And that is how God is becoming king on earth as in heaven." — How God Became King, ch. 8 [line 1326]

"Those who are put right with God through the cross are to be putting-right people for the world. Justification is God's advance putting right of men and women, against the day when he will put all things right, and thereby constituting the justified people as the key agents in that latter project." — How God Became King, ch. 10 [line 1876]

The "putting-right people for the world" line is the practical antidote to the deferred-eschatology trap. Sovereignty isn't being waited on; it's being exercised through the body of Christ in the present.

"Without God's Spirit, there is nothing we can do that will count for God's kingdom. Without God's Spirit, the church simply can't be the church." — Simply Christian, ch. 9 [line 745, paraphrased context]

Move 8 — Incarnation is the presupposition, not the addition. Christ was always Lord; the cross publicly inaugurated what was always true.

The Wright move that most directly addresses the prompt's worry: did God become sovereign at the cross, or was God always sovereign and the cross publicly enthroned what was always true?

Wright's answer is unambiguous: the latter.

"The exaltation of Christ after his work on the cross gives him, publicly, the status which he always in fact enjoyed as of right. The puzzle is caused by sin: though always Lord by right, he must become Lord in fact, by defeating sin and death." — Colossians and Philemon, on 1:18 [line 490]

"In musical terms, we have mistaken key for tune. The key in which the gospels are set is that of incarnational Christology. But the melody is that of the kingdom and of 'Christology' in the much stricter sense of 'Jesus as Messiah'." — How God Became King, ch. 10 [line 1867]

This is the answer to the title's most provocative reading. How God Became King does NOT mean God acquired kingship he previously lacked. It means God's eternal kingship was publicly inaugurated on earth in a manner that had not previously occurred. The eternal sovereignty is presupposed; the kingdom-event is what changed.

§4. Where Wright is careful with theodicy — present evil, suffering, the powers

Wright doesn't write a separate theodicy section in any of these three sources, but he tracks it. Two moves stand out.

He names the diminishment-risk explicitly — and refuses it.

Wright voices the objection in the reader's own words, then answers it. This is methodologically careful:

"'And surely it isn't true, anyway – since the world is still in a horrible mess and since indeed Jesus' followers have contributed to that mess? Wasn't the kingdom of God something having to do with the end of the world, and since that didn't happen, aren't we justified in looking at things very differently? And if in some way we believe that Jesus is exalted or enthroned, surely that is a purely spiritual reality we're talking about? Doesn't the Easter hymn say, "Now above the sky he's king / where the angels ever sing / Alleluia"?'" — How God Became King, ch. 2 [line 360]

That is the diminishment trap stated cleanly. Wright voices it precisely so he can refuse it. The hymn-correction in the next paragraph ("Now o'er all the world he's king") is the refusal.

He distinguishes between the cross-as-atonement and the cross-as-political-victory — and refuses to choose.

"What modern philosophers call the 'problem of evil' has been split off from what modern theologians think of as the 'atonement' – as though the cross of Jesus were not, in the New Testament, God's ultimate answer to the 'problem of evil'. We have allowed 'atonement' to be narrowed down to 'forgiving sins so people can go to heaven', leaving unaddressed the (to us quite different) problem of 'evil' as an abstract thing. That was a dangerous mistake." — How God Became King, ch. 8 [line 1320]

The cross IS the answer to theodicy, in Wright's reading, because it is the point where God's sovereignty engages evil directly and exhausts it. This is not a deferred answer.

"The story of Israel, in its own terms within the ancient Hebrew scriptures, was all along the story of the way in which the creator God was going to deal with the problem of evil. [...] He would draw it onto one place, allowing it to do its worst at that point. And he himself [...] would go to that place, would become Israel-in-person, in order that evil might do its worst to him and so spend its force once and for all." — How God Became King, ch. 9 [line 1622]

The Simply Christian version of the same claim, accessibly:

"On the cross the living God took the fury and violence of the world on to himself, suffering massive injustice—the stories are careful to highlight this—and yet refusing to lash out with threats or curses. Part of what Christians have called 'atonement theology' is the belief that in some sense or other Jesus exhausted the underlying power of evil when he died under its weight, refusing to pass it on or keep it in circulation." — Simply Christian, ch. 16 [line 1315]

He treats suffering not as evidence-against-sovereignty but as evidence-of-the-overlapping-ages.

The Col 1:24 reading:

"Such suffering, indeed, is actually regarded as evidence that the sufferers really are God's new people. That is why Paul can talk of rejoicing in his sufferings, as opposed to merely rejoicing in the midst of, or despite, them. [...] [The Messianic woes] are to be the accompaniment, or perhaps the foreshadowing, of the appearance of the Messiah." — Colossians and Philemon, on 1:24 [line 541]

"All Christians will suffer for their faith in one way or another: if not outwardly, then inwardly, through the long, slow battle with temptation or sickness, the agonizing anxieties of Christian responsibilities for a family or a church [...]. All of these, properly understood, are things to rejoice in—not casually, flippantly or superficially, but because they are signs that the present age is passing away, that the people of Jesus, the Messiah, are the children of the new age, and that the birthpangs of this new age are being worked out in them." — Colossians and Philemon, on 1:24 [line 555]

This is the pastoral payload. Present suffering is not counter-evidence to present sovereignty; it is the texture of the overlap.

He refuses to soften the present hostility of the powers.

Wright does not run the move "yes there is evil, but it's not really very strong." He affirms both — strong evil, stronger sovereignty:

"The paradox remains, and those who engage most directly in the work of the kingdom know, again and again, that the principalities and powers they are confronting are cruel, mean and dirty. Martyrdom of one sort or another, suffering of one sort or another, is what kingdom-bringers must expect." — How God Became King, ch. 10 [line 1870]

This is theologically important. Wright is not a sentimentalist about evil. The sovereignty he affirms is sovereignty over an enemy that is still fighting, not sovereignty in a tidied-up world.

§5. Where Wright could be misread

Honest framing. The diminishment risk lives at these specific seams in Wright's writing:

1. The title How God Became King reads as adoptionist on first encounter. A careless reader will land on the conclusion that God acquired kingship he did not previously have, and therefore (the next step) that present sovereignty is something Jesus grew into on the cross — and by implication that the not-yet is a further growing-into. Wright corrects this aggressively (see Move 8 above; see "key vs. tune" at [line 1867]; see "always Lord by right" at Colossians line 490). But the rhetorical surface is provocative enough that a reader who only meets the title and the headlines could miss the qualifier and reach the wrong pastoral conclusion: God is sort of king now, will be more fully king later, so present circumstances are explicable as not-yet-king-enough. This is the opposite of Wright's argument.

2. "Despite appearances" can be heard as "ignore the evidence." Wright's "despite appearances" move (Move 3) is rigorously not fideism — he is making a historical-narrative claim about where world history's hinge is. But a hurried preacher could borrow the phrase and use it to wave off pastoral pain ("yes, this is hard, but Jesus is sovereign despite appearances") in a way Wright would not endorse. The way Wright avoids this in his own writing is by naming the appearance honestly first (Caesar still solid; the world still in a mess; the principalities are cruel, mean and dirty), then making the sovereignty claim into that named hostility. The order matters. He acknowledges, then claims — never claims-around.

3. The cross-as-throne move can be heard as: "the cross was the only enthronement; therefore between Easter and the parousia, sovereignty is being established but not yet exercised." Wright doesn't say this, but a sloppy summary could imply it. His actual claim is the reverse: the cross publicly inaugurates a sovereignty that is then exercised through the witness of the church in the present ("Jesus is ruling over that new creation and making it happen through the witness of his church" — [line 1326]). Sovereignty is present-tense throughout, not in cold storage between two events.

4. The "tectonic plates / fault lines" image can be heard as God-in-the-middle, balancing. Simply Christian's strain-of-the-in-between language (line 950, line 957) is pastorally valuable but, taken alone, could imply that God himself is at the strain point — under pressure, stretched. Wright doesn't believe this; the strain is the Christian's experience of standing at the overlap, not God's. Read alone, the image risks anthropomorphizing the strain back onto the sovereign. In Wright it doesn't; in a sermon paraphrase it could.

5. The "putting-right people for the world" line, isolated, can sound activist. Wright explicitly grounds it in justification ("God's advance putting right of men and women, against the day when he will put all things right" — line 1876). But the phrase alone, dropped into a sermon without that grounding, can sound like the kingdom comes by Christian effort — which is exactly the activism Wright explicitly disclaims when he refuses the "Christendom-capitulation" and the "sectarian withdrawal" options ([line 1871]). Sovereignty is being exercised; the church participates in the exercise; the church does not constitute it.

§6. One-sentence answer

Wright guards present sovereignty inside the already-not-yet by treating the cross as the public inauguration of a sovereignty that was always Christ's by right, by reading "despite appearances" into the affirmation rather than against it, and by inheriting the Second Temple Jewish posture — that God is already sovereign over the nations, normally invisibly — as the framework Jesus fulfilled rather than the one he replaced.

Three habits make this work mechanically: (a) he polices his own grammar to keep the reign present-tense (the Bishop-of-Durham hymn-edit); (b) he never affirms sovereignty without first naming the appearance honestly (Caesar still solid, principalities cruel and dirty, the world still in a mess); (c) he refuses to let the not-yet be heard as Christ's absence — what is "not yet" is the full visibility and consummation of what is already and presently reigning.

Source map

commentaries/wright_how_god_became_king.md

commentaries/wright_colossians_philemon.md

commentaries/wright_simply_christian.md

What this adds, alongside the existing extracts